The present invention relates to an apparatus for treating glass products such as glass bottles by breaking and crushing the same into particles, powder, etc.
Recently, a glass crushing machine has been proposed as equipment for crushing glass products such as glass bottles into powder, particles, etc, which comprises a crushing chamber, a bottom plate fixed at the bottom surface of a crushing chamber and having a number of pores of a fixed size, a movable plate having a number of pores downward of the bottom plate and disposed to be movable, a crushed substance collecting portion disposed downward of the movable plate, a discharge port disposed at the crushed substance collecting portion, a drive shaft disposed so as to penetrate the bottom plate at a roughly middle of the crushing chamber, a drive portion disposed downward of the crushing chamber via the movable plate and connected to the drive shaft, a roller rotating shaft connected to the drive shaft, a crushing roller fitted into the roller rotating shaft and having a plurality of square columnar projections on the outer circumferential surface thereof, and two scraping plates connected to the drive shaft and disposed so as to move along the inner and outer circumferential sides of the crushing roller when the drive shaft rotates.
Hereinafter a description will be given of actions of a conventional glass crushing machine.
The size of pores can be adjusted by changing the overlapping length of the bottom plate and the movable plate by moving the movable plate disposed downward of the bottom plate.
Next, the drive shaft is rotated at the drive portion, and the roller rotating shaft connected to the drive shaft and scraping plates are accordingly rotated centering around the drive shaft, thereby causing the crushing roller to rotate. At the same time, the crushing roller is rotated centering around the rotating shaft, whereby glass products such as glass bottles charged in a crushing chamber are crushed by a crushing roller. As glass products are crushed to such a particle size as can pass through the pores of the bottom plate of the crushing chamber, the crushed glass particles drops into the crushed substance collecting portion through the pores, the diameter of which is adjusted by the overlap between the bottom plate and movable plate, thereby causing the crushed substances to be collected. Furthermore, the scraping plates turns centering around the drive shaft while they are raking up glass crushed particles toward the passage side along which the crushing roller passes.
However, the abovementioned conventional crushing machine inherently has the following shortcomings.
Since the drive portion is disposed downward of the crushing chamber via the movable plate, dust and dirt may be likely to fall onto the drive portion, whereby a trouble of the drive portion such as seizing due to the dust and dirt is apt to occur, and it is difficult to perform maintenance of the drive portion.
Furthermore, since the angle of rest of glass is large to be 45.degree. to cause the inclination angle of the bottom plate of the crushed substance collecting portion to be large, the glass crushing machine is unavoidably made large-sized in its vertical direction, requiring a wide area of installation. Therefore, it has been highly demanded that the glass crushing machine is made more compact.
Furthermore, since only one crushing roller is provided, the crushing efficiency of glass products is low and the treatment capacity is insufficient. Moreover, since the interval of the respective square columnar projections formed on the outer circumferential surface of a crushing roller is wide, there remains an area where the bottom plate are not brought into contact with the projections. This induces a shortcoming in the crushing efficiency of glass products.
Furthermore, since the scraping plates turns while they are raking up crushed pieces toward the passage side of the crushing roller, a resistance force operates on the scraping plates while turning, whereby there are such problems where the scraping plates are apt to be deformed and the efficiency of raking up the crushed pieces toward the passage side of the crushing roller is insufficient.
Still furthermore, since the overlap of the movable plate and the pores of the bottom plate are adjusted to change the particle size of crushed pieces, crushed powder and particles may be accumulated between the movable plate and bottom plate. There causes such a problem where powder and particles are apt to remain in the crushing chamber.